I Amygdala You

Now, I’m not saying that you should go around irritating others. I’m usually not the kind of person who enjoys doing things like that, though I know those people exist – usually in the form of older brothers. But if you ever find yourself needing some sort of revenge against someone (and slashing their tires seems a bit harsh), this idea would probably be effective.

Here’s what you do:

Step 1: Earn someone’s trust and friendship. This may take awhile, depending on the quality of your social skills.

Step 2: Once you’ve earned this person’s trust, prepare yourself to become a sounding board for his or her feelings. This is an unpleasant but necessary part of friendship.

Step 2a: When the person finally starts talking about feelings, relationships, or other sentimental crap things, he or she will likely say something along the lines of, “It’s like my heart is saying one thing, and my brain is saying another.”

This is where you attack.

Step 3: Grin maniacally and pipe up with, “Actually, the heart is an organ that pumps blood throughout the body! It has no thoughts or feelings!”

Bonus points if you appear overly excited when explaining this to them.

The person will very quickly get annoyed, because they were trying to have a heartfelt conversation, and you clearly ruined that. They may even try to argue by saying, “Yeah, I know that the heart technically doesn’t have thoughts. I just meant that I’m thinking with my emotions.”

…Which, of course, you can energetically respond with, “The emotions don’t come from the heart, silly! They come from a little structure in the brain called the amygdala!” (Show them this diagram, if necessary.)

Your friend will be super grateful for the anatomy lesson, and not at all peeved that you were an insensitive jerk. Or, they’ll hate you, and you’ll have gotten revenge for whatever minor crime they committed against you. Either way, it’s useful.

This technique works in other kinds of situations as well:

The next time your partner looks at you fondly and proclaims that they “heart you,” smile back and sweetly say, “And I amygdala you too, muffin.” SO romantic.

If you’re at a funeral or some other solemn event, and the person in charge invites people from the audience to come to the front and “speak from the heart,” stand up and loudly declare, “My heart does NOT speak! But I’ll talk from the emotion center of my brain – it has lots to say!”

When singing along to any song that includes the word “heart,” replace that word with “amygdala.” The number of syllables won’t match up, and the rhyming will be ruined, but damn it – you’ll be anatomically accurate! And that’s worth … I don’t know, something.

Believe it or not, there are also situations where this technique may actually backfire. Weird, I know.

If a person is clutching her chest and saying she’s having a heart attack, it’s unlikely that her amygdala is acting up. (Not impossible, but unlikely.)

On the other hand, if someone simply complains about a “hurting heart,” they could technically be referring to either their chest heart or their brain heart. In order to clear up any confusion, if you ever see someone making this complaint, it’d be best to lunge at them and scream, “What do you mean?!? Is it your LITERAL heart or your FIGURATIVE heart?? What is the geographical location of your pain?! Help me to help you!!!”

The above situations are the only times that this technique would be a bad idea. Otherwise, it’s perfect.